(Mis)Informed

I have been planning to write about this for along time. But somehow didn’t find the right words for it.

Today I was going through one of the forums on Orkut and I came across this

http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_news_item.php?fes_art_id=31192

My thoughts in this regard were more focused on India’s unceremonious exit from the World cup and how the media has been able to make an issue out of something that doesn’t really effect our daily lives. And I don’t really blame them for it. I think we are as much to blame as them. We make such a hoopla about these things that media just cashes on them.

But what I blame them for is their attitude while dealing with the issue. Media was supposed to be a tool of forming public opinion. But lately the barrage of news channels and print media has certainly changed this. Not once during the entire fiasco did I see any news channel take a stand and stick to it. Everyday they found a new scapegoat. And the previous day scapegoat became a Hero. Their attitude while covering the entire thing was that of just keeping people interested and glued to their channel no matter if they contradicted anything they had said as soon as an hour ago.

Earlier it was Rahul Dravid and Greg Chappel who made India lose, then it was the senior players in Sachin and Saurav and when Sachin came out with a statement it was Greg again. And when Greg quit it was the seniors again. And it was not as though they were reporting these things. No they weren’t. Rather they were openly blaming anyone and everyone whom they found guilty.

It was really sad to see that a medium that’s supposed to form a public opinion couldn’t form an opinion of their own. What drove these guys wasn’t News and keeping people informed. Rather it was the sponsors and the money. And it is as true for the Indian Media as it is for the British Media in the article above.

And it doesn’t end at sports. Movie stars, politicians, and even the common man isn’t spared by them. But sadly enough “we the people” like to get informed by news sources that would make the news interesting and spicy rather than let it be informative. It’s a vicious circle that we find ourselves in. and one of us has to find an exit out of this or we’ll be running around forever.

Globally Incomprehensible

It’s been a while since I last posted something. What can I say? I have been living quiet a normally exciting life of late. Normal because I have had nothing special going on and Exciting because I have finally got work that keeps me busy and makes me forget how normal things are.

Well now that I cribbed all the time through my posts that I had no work this time I thought I would crib about how much work I got on my hands and how people I don’t even know are trying to jeopardize my job.

Well most part of a project that I am part of is spent reading (I know I never did that when I had to in College and now I have to put up with it. Things you got to do to sponsor your weekend at Haze!!!). But it’s just no ordinary reading. We don’t get a nice little textbook to sit and read rather we have to put up with STANDARDS ( I never understood why they are called so?).

Anyhow people who have a degree in Engineering would have definitely heard of IEEE. Yes it’s that highly overpriced club in your college that you always thought was a waste of time money. I thought that too. But it seems the high honchos at this place somehow had read my mind and planned revenge even before I started going to college.

IEEE as you must know is a standardization institution. It takes up the best of all worlds for a given problem and standardizes the work so that the technology in use all over is the same. (I can’t believe I actually had to put that down. Feels like I am promoting my tormentors).

Anyhow, this standardized works are converted to standards in a standardized format (talk of double standards) and then forwarded to poor designers like us so that we can use them to make a design which meets the specifications listed in the standardized standard (Phew!!!). And that’s where these people not even remotely associated with me make my life a living hell.

Every time I sit with a new set of standards I wonder that how could so much work go into making a thing uniform and absolutely no work goes into making it understandable. It’s as if these people not even paying our salaries have decided that they want to try and prevent us from making a living. Not our employer, but these people who don’t even know who I am have decided that they want me to earn each penny. These people are supposed to make a global standard that everyone could understand. But I think they spend more time figuring out ways on how a person can be made to misinterpret what they are saying. It’s as if they are trying to make things “globally incomprehensible”.

Anyhow got to go now. Need to decipher what these guys have in store for me now. Adios People. Hope to be more regular in next time around.